Glory and Gore | Pia Oza

Mother is telling me
To stop writing angry poetry.
She wonders where the blood comes from –
Did I breed this violence, birth it from a lifeless form?
Did I nurture it with hate and sun it with rage?
Did I fight a war and win, only to end up a prey?

No, mother, I say,
I assume the world won’t listen when I speak,
and half of it will shut me out when I talk about what I feel,
but maybe they’ll hear me out if I bleed.
If my blood shatters on the ground and births seedlings of words,
maybe they’ll turn these little ones
into a tree. Maybe, in some time,
they’ll look over and see
that, after all, they understood me.
I believe,
that this thunderstorm of wind can adopt this feeble leaf.

So, when I pour my heart out, the page listens.
Acres and acres of white for my insides to settle in.
Empty lines for the red pen to creep in.

A sick man’s bed for the nightmares to haunt,
ghosts of stolen pearls a rich woman loved to flaunt,
phantoms of agony, cradling me in their arms,
because if I don’t belong anywhere, I still belong
in the ferocious melancholy that poetry demands.

And I don’t want the easy way out,
I don’t want the tears if there’s no art to be found.
There will be an advantage, a leverage to my cause,
some relief, for it’s such a pain with so much to feel –
but the deal is the deal.
So, I shake the hands of grief
(my own, or borrowed),
for I won’t go empty-handed, not without a seed
for my brain to feed on and nibble and carve into poetry.

So come, challenge me.
Place your ruinous wrath before me, see
if I flinch, if I recoil, if I ever turn my back on misery –
it’s just another battlefield.

Tell me mother, is it so bad for a woman to wield
a weapon of words, a sword of poetry?
Is it so bad if I defend myself with it,
yet take some pleasure even when I bleed?

I will not, cannot
stop writing angry poetry,
and the ballads to the bloody battlefield
will never cease their way out of me, because

I am woman, hear me roar,
with battle cries of glory and gore,
as I break down the castle walls, for
I am my own knight
in shining armour.

I’m a 17 year old poet living in Mumbai, who’s obsessed with all things art – books, movies, music, poetry, paintings, all of it. Everything I see and feel finds a home in my words – be it confessional poetry or a simple book review. When I’m in my element, you can find me scribbling poetry, crying over a novel, watching an art history video, or sipping strong ginger-tea!